Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @02:04AM
from the inexorable-shift dept.

donniebaseball23 writes "Earlier today, Verizon and Apple finally confirmed what everyone knew was coming: iPhone will soon launch on the Verizon network. The hugely popular iPhone has been a hit with gamers and game developers on the App Store, and by bringing the phone to the largest carrier in the US, the installed base suddenly could get much larger. The folks at social gaming network OpenFeint believe the Verizon iPhone impact could be immediately felt this year. 'The iPhone coming to Verizon is a highly anticipated event by the mobile gaming community,' said Peter Relan, chairman of OpenFeint. 'Adding 13 million more potential gamers on the iPhone is going to be a watershed moment for mobile gaming. I wouldn't be surprised if the US mobile gaming industry doubles in revenue this year because of this deal.'"

Translation: "I've never used an iPhone 4 in my life, but that's not going to stop me from telling you all about how slow and clunky its CPU is. Instead, I recommend that you buy a phone designed by an ad agency."

some people do get that hardware is only part of the equation. OS, Apps, Content, Ecosystem are probably more important to the user experience. Even on the very narrow subject of performance, it may be news to you, but it's not all about hardware: the OS and the way apps are written is as important, if not more, as the hardware.

It's also what console gamers have been saying since the first 3D cards appeared and PCs became the more technically capable platform. Yet the home games market still doesn't seem to be in any danger of a massive swing towards the desktop, nearly two decades later. Suffice to say that specifications are not a reliable predictor for or against a game platform's dominance in isolation. What'll matter is how developer support is courted and maintained, and by all accounts that's what Apple and Google are betting the farm on.